[1617, Jan. 27. Minute of Privy Council, printed from Register in M. S. C. i. 374; also in Chalmers, 463; Variorum, iii. 494.]
A letter to the Lord Mayor of London. Whereas his Maiestie is
informed that notwithstanding diverse Commaundementes and prohibicions
to the contrary there bee certaine persons that goe about
to sett vp a Play howse in the Black ffryaers neere vnto his Maiesties
Wardrobe, and for that purpose have lately erected and made fitt
a Building, which is allmost if not fully finished, Youe shall vnderstand
that his Maiesty hath this day expressly signifyed his pleasure, that
the same shalbee pulled downe, so as it bee made vnfitt for any such
vse, whereof wee Require your Lordshipp to take notice, and to cause
it to bee performed accordingly with all speede, and therevpon to
certify vs of your proceedinges. And so, &c.
APPENDIX E
PLAGUE RECORDS
[Bibliographical Note.—Early accounts of the vital statistics of the plague are J. Graunt, Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality (1662, 1665, 1676); Reflections on the Weekly Bills of Mortality (1665, two eds.); J. Bell, London's Remembrancer (1665). Modern studies are C. Creighton, History of Epidemics in Britain (1891); C. H. Hull, The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (1899, with reprint of Graunt's Observations); W. J. Simpson, A Treatise on Plague (1905). Murray, ii. 171, discusses The Relation of the Plague to the Closing of the Theatres. The ultimate material consists largely of the weekly bills of mortality returned for each London parish and published by the City authorities. In these the deaths from plague were separately stated. They were probably prepared throughout our period, at any rate from the plague of 1563. On 14 July 1593 John Wolf entered in the Stationers' Register (Arber, ii. 634) a licence to print 'the billes, briefes, notes and larges gyven out for the sicknes weekly or otherwise'. The only complete bill extant is one for 20 Oct. 1603 (Political Tracts, 1680, in Guildhall Library), but summaries of the weekly totals are available for 1563-6 (J. Gairdner, Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, 123, 144), 1578-83 (Creighton, i. 341, from Hatfield MSS.), 1593 (Hull, ii. 426, from Graunt; vide infra), 1597-1600 (Hull, ii. 432, from Ashmolean MS. 824), 1603 (Hull, ii. 426, from Graunt; Scaramelli in V. P. x. 33 sqq.), 1604 (Nicolo Molin in V. P. x. 132 sqq.), 1606-10 (Creighton, i. 494, from Bell). During the sixteenth century the bills appear normally to have covered 108 or 109 parishes wholly or partly within the City jurisdiction, but on 4 Aug. 1593 Westminster, St. Katherine's, St. Giles, Southwark, Shoreditch, and other suburbs were ordered exceptionally to make returns to the Lord Mayor (Dasent, xxiv. 442). On 14 July 1603 the normal list was extended to include eleven suburban parishes, and in 1606 another was added, making 121 in all. But the important areas of Westminster, Lambeth, Newington, Stepney, Hackney, Islington, and Rotherhithe remained uncovered. Moreover, the suburban
